My ultimate goal is work
as a concept artist, primarily for video games but movies and
animation are also possibilities, with this in mind I want my final
major project to be geared toward building a portfolio that will give
me the best possible chance to get work in these industries. Practice
in painting quickly using digital media, primarily Photoshop will be a
very important first step, particularly over summer, ready for the
project. Video games can cover numerous genre's and be set in any
number of time periods and locations and so I'll need to look at
creating a range of images depicting some of the different
possibilities. I will be concentrating on spaces and level design as
these are very important in the creation of a game and are something
that I've done a lot of. I predominantly want to engage the audience
as without that engagement the games will be much less enjoyable; I
will try to engage the player by making the environments as real as
possible, paying attention to detail and making it seem like a real
place as well as being interesting and unusual enough to attract
their attention. Additionally I'll need to look at creating mystery,
fear and excitement as these are often used in games and I need to
know how communicate these things to an audience.
My research project will
feed into the main project and will concentrate on figures, I will need
to draw figures very quickly and be able to produce a number of quick
designs
that can be taken to
finished concepts as needed. I will also need to keep the above
considerations in mind, such as expressing meaning and looking at
time periods and settings. Characters will also have their own
considerations, such as expressions and how their personalities show
in the way they move, stand, sit etc, they will need to be products
of their environments and defined heavily by the spaces and areas designed in the major project; I will need to produce a lot of studies of
movements, stances and expressions using life drawing and possible
photographs, so that I have a large stock of images to reference.
I would typically like my
work to be dark and moody, although not necessarily horror, also
fantasy and science fiction are a big interest of mine and
fortunately these genres tend to be ubiquitous amongst video games.
Studying a number of historical time periods will be very useful in
creating the kind of fantasy characters and environments and
fortunately there are a number of museums, medieval fairs and events
that I can visit to collect this information. Science fiction may be
more difficult to collect reference for and covers a wider range of
styles and depictions to; my best options is to obtain images the
20th century to present and see how they can be altered to
create convincing futuristic environments. Some things I can look at are,
factories and industrial buildings, art deco architecture, aircraft
and other vehicles, and machinery; I can also look at current
advances in technology for ideas, particularly if I decide to
concentrate on science fiction. I will have to look at lighting also,
whilst always important I think it's even more so when aiming for a
dark, moody atmosphere.
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Mark Gibbons is an
illustrator and concept artist that I first became aware of due to
his illustrations in various wargaming manuals produced for Games
Workshop. Whilst he became a concept artist later in his career and
much of that work is of a higher quality than these images they are
more relevant to my practice, the atmosphere created by the lighting and the smoky
texture in the backgrounds create a great effect that very simply
describes the gloomy quality of the universe he is illustrating. Despite
being typical, over the top fantasy art, Gibbons has clearly put a
lot of emphasis on the characters, they seem to have personalities,
even the character who is fully armoured and has no visible facial
features, this is likely to do with the use of body language and
small props, especially in the top image with the cigar and the stick
held under the smaller figures arm. In my own work I would like to
replicate the dark feel of his images, I will also experiment with
some cloudy background textures as these could help with the dark
atmosphere as well as adding some more interest to character concepts
which often have little in the way of background; I could also
experiment with the use of small props to help with characterisation.
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Final Fantasy 7 is a video
game, released in 1997, that centres around a group trying to stop an
evil corporation using up worlds magical energy, the loss of which
will kill the planet. It has a great integration of fantasy and
science fiction, the magical from the world is being used as an
energy resource, giving rise to many technological advancements
before society is really able to adjust meaning there are quaint
medieval fantasy buildings and huge industrial spaces with little
in-between. The industrial spaces are massive in scale and filled
with pipes, valves, girders and sheet metal walls, they're very
grungy and used and seem to have been designed without a particular
art or architectural movement as inspiration giving it a very bleak,
utilitarian appearance. I would like to experiment with this in my
own work, I think illustrating something as a purely functional space
and grungy industrial area's are very interesting to me than white,
clean far future environments and they're going to lend themselves
more to the dark, moody look I wan to create. The manner in which
the concept art for the spaces is drawn is something I would like to
attempt, the high angle view is due to the game being played from
that angle so attempting it myself would not only be good practice
for drawing with the games viewpoints in mind but I think it would also a good way of
visualising a space and getting a lot of information into one image.
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Blade Runner is an
enormously influential movie, probably responsible for the entirety
of modern cyberpunk movies, anime, books and video games. The
lighting and tone of this movie are the exact kind of dark and moody
that I want to recreate and the dingy, near future setting is
something that I am interested in and comes up so much in video games
it would be hard to avoid even if I wanted to. It has a a depressing, bleak quality to the setting which I think is what been carried in to so much other fiction, particularly the near future cyberpunk and post apocalyptic genres; I'm sure that all of my favourite science fiction movies and television shows could be traced back to some blade runner influence and I think my practice could benefit from some analysis of the movie.
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I've been unable to find
much information on Alex Ichim and what he's worked on, if anything,
but I have to look at his digital paintings here, they have a good
balance between quick and detailed, the mech image also has some very
interesting textures. I will be experimenting with digital painting
in photoshop with the intention of improving speed and painting
ability these images give me a far better idea of what I'm aiming
for, it's quite easy to see where the layers have been built up. It's
hard to pin down precisely which elements I want to take from these
images, the stark military theme could be something to look at,
especially as, like here, it can relate to science fiction and post
apocalyptic genres which I would like to experiment with.
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John Howe is a fantasy
artist most well known for his designs for the Lord of the Rings and
the Hobbit movies, he has a dedication to realism in his work and
always tries to bring some element of it to his fantasy
illustrations, particularly in medieval weapons and armour, he's able
to draw many of them from life due his interest in living
history/reenactment and most the drawings are based on items he or
his friends own.(19) This consideration gives a level of
believability to images he creates, and makes the world seem more real,
if you compare with Mark Gibbons work above, with weapons and shoulder
pads so large they would be if not impossible to use at least very
impracticable. I much prefer fantasy to have this element of realism
in it, I think fantasy can already be a stretch of peoples suspension
of disbelief and while it's definitely important to keep a sense awe
and astonishment in fantasy some of the more ridiculous aspects are
probably better avoided.
Looking at these artists
has helped define what how my Major Project will will progress, it's
going to be entirely aimed toward producing a range of spaces in
various themes, time periods and genres; all of which will be made
concept art as needs a main consideration. I will aim toward darker
imagery with dim, moody lighting to add to the effect; all of the
images will be painted directly into Photoshop with consideration
toward both painting skill and speed. I will base the images on
specific era's and styles, to give me a lot of realistic
representations to build the more outrageous and implausible fantasy
and science fiction elements on top of; I will also experiment with
altering some of the spaces, such as with explosions, crashes or the
deterioration of time. During my research project I will also create
some characters using the same approaches and designed with in the
same time periods and styles, these can then be added in to the spaces
to create finished illustrations.
Bibliography
Johnson, Jervis,
Second Edition Ork Codex, 1994
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Priestly, Rick,
Second Edition, 1994
Final Fantasy VII,
Square Product Development Division 1, 1997
Final Fantasy VII,
Square Product Development Division 1, 1997
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Blade Runner, 1982
Blade Runner, 1982
Blade Runner, 1982
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Howe, John, Might and
Magic The Art of John How, Harper Collins Publishers 2001 pg. 137
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